Catharsis: Scottish Edition

There are many things that have been wonderfulfabulousterrificamazing about moving to a foreign land for a year.  For starters, Edinburgh is simply one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen.  And, while I can’t say I’ve been to as many places as, say, the Jolie-Pitt kids, I have been fortunate to see some pretty spectacular places.  (See here, for proof!)  Moreover, how cool is it that we are doing this?  I have always wanted to live abroad for a while, experiencing life as an American expat, and now I am.  Furthermore, living in Scotland guarantees a few niceties, such as free healthcare and cheap prescription drugs, good whisky (so I hear) and beer and pear cider at the pubs (so I know), and seeing totallyawesomely stereotypical things every so often:

(like teenagers in kilts…

… or men playing the bagpipes in the middle of a field on a random Saturday).

BUT!  There have also been some of the most jarring cultural differences that we have smacked into that are as unexpected as the fact that “clotted cream” is not nearly as disgusting as it sounds.

Let’s recount, shall we?

First: opening a bank account at the Bank of Scotland has been one of the single-most infuriating experiences in the whole history of human existence.  I knew, knew, KNEW that we should not have listened to the fellow classmate of Peter’s who said that he simply walked into the University branch and set up his account with a passport and student ID.  But, when you are withdrawing cash from your U.S. bank account (eh hem, Chase) every few days, getting charged outrageous fees by a bank hell-bent on punishing its customers for its own stupidity that led to the mess we’re in today, then you’d have hope that you could open an account in your country of residence, too.  Right?!

Buuuuhhht, you’d be wrong.  Because, while we have tried to be sensitive to cultural differences like the fact that Americans tend to expect customer service to be immediate and other countries can sometimes take a bit longer, we never expected that it would take SIX WEEKS to have access to THOUSANDS of pounds that we happily handed over to the incompetent staff at the Bank of Scotland, thinking, perhaps foolishly, that the bank would keep it safely in its care for us when we needed to use it.  Because, I mean, isn’t that why we have bank accounts?

Apparently not.  So, we continued to pay the aforementioned outrageous fees that Chase charged (I loathe you, Chase Bank) while the Bank of Scotland (I loathe you, too, Bank of Scotland) sent us unnecessary amounts of mail, one envelope at a time, regarding policies and procedures and the need for further ID.  I called the bank’s alleged customer service line no less than 30 times, and whenever I attempted to speak with a bank teller IN PERSON, I received classic British customer service: impeccable manners combined with UTTER INCOMPETENCE.

I plan to write a letter of complaint, of course, but I am taking a while to work on this masterpiece.  My goal is to ensure that every person who reads the letter cries.  AND YES, THIS IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE.

Second!  Let me recount for you a conversation that I had the other day with a CHARMING young man who has the distinguished job of managing a local branch of a bookstore retail chain, a la Barnes and Noble.

Dude:  Ms. Kline?  I was phoning regarding your email about the bookseller position in my store.

Me:  Yes, thank you for calling.  As my email indicates, I had some questions regarding the email that I was sent in response to my application.  The email I received stated that there were presently no positions available for someone with my skills and experience.  However, I provided ample evidence of my retail and customer service experience, my advanced education, and my experience in this exact position at a comparable bookseller in the U.S.

D:  Yes, but your experience as a bookseller was ten years ago.

M:  Yes, it was.  But, as my application indicates, that was an entry-level, part-time position which I held while finishing my secondary education.  From that position, I went on to hold numerous customer service positions which clearly drew upon that initial experience and provide me with additional skills that I am certain could be useful for me were I to become a bookseller for your store.

D:  Well, it was not sufficient in this highly competitive market.

M (stunned):  Weren’t there three bookseller positions available?

D:  That’s correct.

M (still stunned):  And someone with ten years of customer service experience, a Master’s-level education, and impeccable references does not have the sufficient qualifications to work as a retail clerk at your bookstore?

D:  That’s also correct.

M:  For a MINIMUM WAGE position?

D:  (silence)

M (beyond stunned and now thoroughly flabbergasted):  So, um, do you keep my application on file or do I have to re-apply if another position is more, um, suitable?

D:  Well, your application has been rejected and deleted.  You’d have to apply again.  (Pause).  But the same measures will apply so…

M:  Um, ok.  So, goodbye, then.  (Hang up)(Crawl into fetal position next to Peter on the couch)(Vent)(Cry).

Seriously, Waterstone’s?  Seriously?  Needless to say: boycott is in effect.  Feel free to join.

Third!  As I’ve been typing this post, Peter and I decided to order some Chinese food to be delivered tonight because it is cold and wet outside, and we are both in a funk.  We Googled a place relatively nearby and submitted an online order for beef fried rice and sweet and sour chicken.  We received our confirmation email and waited for our flat to be buzzed.

And waited.

And waited.

Confused, I called and spoke with an employee who stated that the restaurant had not received our order.  I said that we had received a confirmation email.  She audibly shrugged.  So, we re-ordered and got 50 pence taken off the bill.  We were told that our order would arrive in twenty to thirty minutes.  And so, again, we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

An HOUR later, I called the restaurant to see about the “status” of my order.  I was assured that it would arrive within five minutes.  So we waited.

And waited.

Another fifteen minutes later, a man knocked on all of the doors on our level.  I unlocked and opened our door, made quick and apologetic eye contact with my neighbors (whom, p.s. I have never before seen), and retrieved my food.

“Cheuhrs teh yuh,” the man said, as he rushed back down the stairs.

Cheers indeed.

So, needless to say, we’re adjusting.  It’s funny– we really thought we would feel more “at home” with fellow English-speakers than we did when we traveled on the Continent.  Interestingly, the more settled we get in our temporary home here, the more we realize that we are “outsiders.”

(P.S. I miss France).

On Motherhood: A Confession (Part II)

I am the youngest child in a family of four.  So, I don’t exactly have a lot of experiences with babies (also, see below).  Some of our good friends from seminary had an adorable little girl, and I had the esteemed privilege of getting to hang out with her for a few hours every once in a while when her mom and dad were taking much-needed breaks.  They were always so relieved to have a few hours to themselves, and they lavished me with much undeserved gratitude.  The truth of the situation was that they were giving me much-needed experience with a baby.  At the ripe old age of 27, I finally changed my first diaper, put a baby down for a nap, fed a baby with a bottle and with some baby food, and tried to soothe a screamer.  Granted, there was the afternoon I had to call the mother because I was trembling from head to toe from the blood-curdling screams that lasted for two hours . . .

But, I digress.

My first experience with the birth of a child came upon me when I was an old child myself, at 18.  I had started growing closer to a friend from church who I will call Emma (not her real name, you know, to protect her privacy).  She had been dating one of the members of our high school youth group for several years, and near the end of the summer before our senior year began, they broke up.  She was sad, so she had sex with him (the logic of adolescence?).  She got pregnant.  He told her that her pregnancy was the inevitable result of her lack of faith that God would forgive them for doing this heinous thing.  His parents said that they couldn’t make him do anything one way or another since he was eighteen, but they were careful to argue that their son, the man-child, was clear of any legal responsibilities since Emma “had forced herself upon him” and was “more than consenting.”

Our church responded by asking Emma to step down from her leadership responsibilities in the youth group.  When it became clear that I was going to continue to associate with her, they politely and discretely put other people in charge of my leadership responsibilities, too.  No one ever talked to me about it, but it was clear that they didn’t want the name of their church’s youth group sullied by a pregnant teen or any of her condoning friends.  I left the church and went to another.  I was too busy with school and other matters to contemplate the church’s actions anyway.

Emma considered getting an abortion.  She researched information about clinics in Texas, which can be very dangerous places and very difficult to know of.  But in the end, she decided to give birth to the baby and to arrange for him to be adopted by a family with the financial and maturational resources to support him.  Emma’s mother was mystified by her decision, wanting Emma to keep and raise the baby with her help, but she allowed Emma to make her own decision.  In another controversial decision, Emma decided she did not want her mom to be in the delivery room when she gave birth.  She feared it would be too painful and difficult for her mother.  Plus, she was sixteen!  She thought her mother would drive her crazy!  So she asked me if I’d be willing to be her coach.  I said yes and accompanied Emma to six weeks of Lamaze classes and almost all of her doctor’s appointments.  She scheduled her induced labor for the Friday before our spring break.  We got up early that morning, drove with her mom to the hospital, and waited.

How can I describe a child giving birth to a child?  How can I describe it as I saw it, through child-eyes?  Emma breathed heavily and writhed on her bed.  She squeezed her eyes shut and moaned in a private world of pain.  Her lips chapped, and her throat grew parched.  She sucked on ice and gripped my hand.  I tried to remember everything our Lamaze teacher had taught us.  This was, however, unlike any test I had ever taken before.  I couldn’t remember my notes, and there wasn’t any time to think.  We felt like we had been waiting forever, and then, suddenly, Emma’s legs were positioned on stirrups and a blackish red mass began peeking through.  The nurses smacked an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth.  I grabbed her face and made her look into my eyes.  I started shouting at her: “EMMA!  Focus!  Breathe!  You can do this!  You’re almost there!  It’s almost over!  Breathe!  Push!  Breathe!  Push!  You’re doing great!  Oh my God!  I see his whole head!  Breathe!  Push!  Oh my God!  He has arms!  Breathe…”

A creamy and bloodied blob emerged, attached to a cord.  Emma released my hand and fell back on her bed, exhausted.  Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I was trembling.  The doctor suctioned the little blob’s nostrils and mouth, wiped his eyes, ears, and lips, and handed him to a nurse.  The doctor turned back to Emma, coaching her through the afterbirth process.  But I felt like I was floating, hovering over the scene, everything tinged with a mysterious shimmer.  The nurse cleaned the baby, put an identification tag on his ankle, swaddled him like she was wrapping a burrito, and started to hand him to Emma.  She opened her eyes, took one look at him, and pointed at me.  “Give him to her,” she spluttered.

The nurse obeyed, and I fixed my eyes on this tiny newborn creature staring back at me, sleepily.  I kissed his soft and fuzzy forehead, not even considering that he hadn’t yet been bathed.  I cradled him and rocked him and wept over him, and he gulped tiny sips of earth’s air.  The room spun around me in a dizzying frenzy, but I held onto that little, beloved, precious being with all my heart and strength, and I felt more incontrovertibly embraced by God in that moment than I have ever before or since.

On Motherhood: A Confession (Part I)

So, it seems to be that time.  That time for Peter and I to start thinking seriously about reproduction.  So, I’ve been thinking.  Seriously, about reproduction.

And I just don’t know what to think.

Years of soul-searching and counselling have not led me to any profound realization about why I feel so ambivalent about being a mother.  Nonetheless, that’s precisely how I feel: ambivalent.  Sometimes, when I see a cute baby behaving itself, I admire from afar and appreciate the cuteness.  But, the minute that baby starts to fuss or cry, my admiration abruptly cuts off and turns to annoyance.  ’Ugh,’ I think, toward the parent, ‘Control your kid.’  (God, I feel like such a BAD WOMAN for confessing this).

When I was younger, I only babysat a handful of times.  I never enjoyed it, and I was never very good at it.  I remember once having a babysitting job with my older sister.  We were supposed to take care of five siblings for an entire day, and by the middle of the day, I wanted to shoot myself.  I was bored beyond belief, I felt more awkward and uncomfortable than I usually did (which is saying a lot for a teenager), and I ended up just behaving like another one of the kids for my sister to look after.  (God bless her… Though, believe me, she didn’t take too kindly to my negligence).

I never felt very natural playing “House” as a little kid.  When my sister and my friends wanted to play with baby dolls, I played along, but only because I wanted to spend time with my friends and do whatever they were doing.  I never volunteered to work in the nursery at church, and the sound of a child crying in the middle of a service or a movie or a mall grated on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.  Even when I was a child, I remember thinking that children were weird: we were far more likely than the grown-ups to have snot dripping out of our noses or dirt underneath our fingernails or cough-germs that we were spreading to the surrounding world in lieu of covering our mouths like decent human beings.  My parents remember fondly my kindergarten graduation, when all of the little graduates were seated in a row on a stage as we awaited our name being announced.  I was (unfathomably) seated next to a punk of a little boy who insisted on making a scene throughout much of the ceremony.  And with photos to prove it, my parents laugh and laugh about the death-stares I was shooting at the boy throughout the whole ridiculous event.

Growing up, I never really thought much about having children myself.  A mother was someone old and, often, fat and boring.  Or worse, a mother was someone who seemed to live her entire life devoted to her children, and not in a way that I found admirable.  She seemed to forget about herself, her own needs, her own dreams, her own life.  And what troubled me the most was that it was precisely this total neglect of self-hood that seemed to be most lauded by others as the essence of motherhood.  Meanwhile, I observed these women in their unhappiness:  I watched as friends’ mothers entangled themselves in the lives of their children, desperate to see their dreams lived out in the lives of their offspring.  I observed the mothers who pushed and pushed their children into various activities with a vice-like grip: you WILL be a world-class volleyball player, you WILL be an actress, you WILL be a pastor.  And then, even more insidiously, there were the mothers who pressed further: you WILL be popular in school, you WILL have the dream boyfriend, you WILL be the envy of all your friends, WE WILL WIN THIS GAME!

Of course, there were, thank God in heaven, the exceptions.  There was Becky, who ran her own business and helped with the youth group and gave her own children space to develop into who they wanted to be.  And it is one of the insurmountable blessings in my life that she let me watch and observe and absorb an alternative.  And there was Jenny, who laughed even more than her joy-filled daughters and who seemed to be having just as much fun with life as she could.  And one of the warmest places on earth is being in her presence.

Still, the odds seemed stacked against mothers these days.  If they are pursuing their careers to the nth degree, they are unhappy to be away from their families so much.  And if they are with their families all the time, they are unhappy allowing that long-sought-after college degree to sit in a corner, collecting dust with the rest of their ambitions.  And if they let on that they are unsatisfied with either of these alternatives, then they are labelled as whiners or femi-nazis or anti-feminists or spoiled brats or bad mothers or … whatever other unholy thing can be said about a woman (the list is disturbingly extensive).

But some strange things have happened in my life over the last few years.  First, I met a young man who was different from nearly every other young man I knew.  He didn’t make demeaning sexual comments or laugh when others did (which, let’s be honest, put him in a category of an alarmingly small group of young men).  He didn’t judge other people or assume the worst about them and their motives (which, let’s be honest, set him apart from, well, me…).  And he carried himself in a way that demonstrated a quiet confidence in his own identity without ever needing to be arrogant or boastful, on the one hand, or needy and insecure, on the other.  And so, I fell in love and waited for him to discern if marrying me was something God wanted him to do.  (I know this sounds anti-feminist, but it is really how it went down.  I knew that men like him were few and far between, and I wanted this one.  So, I waited.)

Three years after our first date, we got married.

And now, it’s been a little over three years.

Obviously, to complete the Trinitarian structure, it is now time for us to start thinking seriously about reproduction.  (I only sorta kid…)

I came across this article recently, and, while I may not hold the same theological presuppositions as the author, I really resonated with a lot of what she has to say.  As it happens, I graduated from my (Catholic) college with this author.  I didn’t know her very well, but I can vouch for the fact that she was one of the journalistic superstars at the school.  (As the article demonstrates, she is clearly a phenomenal writer).

While this is just Part I of a few posts of my wrestling with this subject, I want to know what other women (or men, I suppose) have to say about all of this.

Why be a mother?

(Discuss.)

My Life With Coffee

Some people marry into money. I married into coffee. Well, sort of. Being married to Megan has brought me innumerable delights, but at the top of them has to be that magical brown bean.

I never really drank coffee before we got married, but as soon as we got that scan gun thing at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Megan went to the coffee maker aisle and insisted we register for a top of the line expresso/coffee machine. I thought, “OK, whatever she wants.”

Fast-forward three years. During the course of our marriage thus far, Megan has made the morning coffee maybe four times. The first of those was her showing me how to make the coffee.  After that, I quickly came to love making the coffee and took over full responsibility for it. It was like a miracle every morning. Transforming the aromatic coffee grinds into a rich, sultry cup of heaven. And all that with the simple touch of a button!

But then I got curious. How does coffee actually work? Where does it come from? What is going on with all that mysterious bubbling and sputtering from the coffee machine? What really makes a good cup of coffee? So I became determined to find out.

My first step was to chuck the pre-packaged coffee grinds and begin to grind the beans myself. This did two things for me. It showed me that coffee from fresh ground beans is much better than coffee from pre-ground beans. The half-life of a cracked bean is small. You’ve got to act quick to get the best from your grinds. Letting them sit on your shelf is like waiting until season five to get into Gilmore Girls. It’s just too late. The best is already past.

But beyond the flavor improvement that grinding my own beans brought, I must say the most significant change was the heightened sense of connection with my coffee that occurred. No, I don’t mean this in some mystical, neo-pagan, one-with-nature sense. I mean it in the simple sense that I was now responsible for the transition from the whole bean to the liquid in my cup. Much more was now at stake every morning. If I under-grind the beans, the best flavors stay locked up in the grinds. If I over-grind the beans, I’ll end up with overly-strong, sludge ridden coffee. BUT! If I get the grind just right, then I begin each morning with a true achievement: I participate in the magic of the coffee bean by responsibly overseeing its transition from bean to liquid.

But just grinding the beans was not enough, I determined. The presence of a coffee machine was taking some of the enchantment out of the coffee making process. And those awful paper filters! They suck up all the best oils from the grinds and leave them in the machine and not in your cup where they belong. And the coffee warmers on most machines! Within an hour your fresh coffee is scorched and no longer worth drinking. So it was to my utter delight when Megan’s parents gave me my first french press coffee-maker for Christmas that first year of our marriage. A gift that keeps on giving, indeed!

Now I was really involved with my coffee. Not only did the grind have to be right, but now water temperature and steep time were a factor. The risks were great, but the successes were glorious. Saturday morning. Snow on the ground. Perfect grind. Perfect boil. Perfect steep. Perfect press. Perfect pour. Gilmore Girls season three with Megan. Can it get any better?

Apparently it can. Two weeks ago Megan surprised me with a gift that is now on my all-time-best-gifts list. She bought me a manual coffee bean grinder. I can’t begin to express the delight this gift brings me. The only electricity now involved in my coffee is the spark that ignites the gas on our stove. The tactile pleasure of feeling the beans grind at the turn of the grind-handle is almost sensuous. And! The same day she bought me the grinder we discovered a coffee roaster just down the street from our flat. Now I know the very people who roast my coffee beans.

This Christmas I am hoping for my own coffee roaster and a few acres of land in El Salvador. I’m not kidding.

On Theology and Death

Good theology is supposed to be open to the ambiguities and difficulties of human reality. But perhaps it is not the best idea to do theology on the heels of an existential crisis.

Yesterday, as readers know, I had a brush with death when I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. This morning, I was working on a draft of my personal statement for my Ph.D. applications, and I think I was in something of a life or death mood. The first line of my statement read: “The post-Christian era into which Western civilization has emerged leaves us with perhaps two theological options: either with nihilism we are waiting for nothingness or with radical faith we are waiting for Jesus.”

True enough, I think, but perhaps I can grab the attention of Ph.D. committees with something a little less apocalyptic. Another draft in the trash bin.